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What’s Now: San Francisco

A monthly conversation at the Applied Innovation Exchange

What’s Now: San Francisco is a monthly conversation stimulated by a local thought leader about the most important innovations emerging in the San Francisco Bay Area right now. Once a month, Reinvent and Capgemini will gather a diverse group of innovators at the new Applied Innovation Exchange in SOMA for an evening of discussion and networking, along with good food and drinks.

Each month we’ll feature a remarkable person who deeply understands one of the many areas exploding with innovation—someone who can explain the big story, what’s most important now, and what’s coming next. Over the course of a year we will explore a range of sectors – from AI to biotech to clean energy to food – that make San Francisco ground zero for breakthroughs that soon will impact the rest of the world.

Something special is happening in the region right now, with so many systems from the past being fundamentally reinvented for the digital, global, sustainable 21st-century world to come. What’s Now: San Francisco will provide a provocative program and a consistent place to cross-connect networks and exchange new insights about what’s emerging around us right now.

Innovators

Recent Conversations

At July’s What’s Now: San Francisco, Ken Goldberg took on those who are churning up fears of a near future where half of all current jobs are taken over by robots and powerful AI—let alone a slightly more distant future where robots rule over us.

Sunil Paul co-founded Sidecar, where he also served as CEO, in 2011. Sidecar was one of the earliest pioneers of the modern ride-sharing model and collected numerous ride-sharing and ride-hailing patents during the course of its five-year run. Now an unencumbered thought leader in the transportation space, Paul has devoted his time to thinking about the future of AVs and transportation in general.

New biomedical technologies are on the cusp of dramatically impacting not only healthcare and how we treat disease, but life itself. Join visionary biologist Andrew Hessel at What’s Now: San Francisco as he explores the extraordinary potential—and potential drawbacks—of gene editing and 3D printing in the field of biotech.

Many people have heard of bitcoin and might know something about blockchain, the technology system underlying the crypto currency. Yet few people understand how important blockchain technology could be not just for financial tech, but also for almost every other field.

Can we stop global warming in the next 30 years? This is the burning question of the 21st century and renowned environmentalist Paul Hawken used our March What’s Now: San Francisco gathering to give his answer: Yes we can.

Humans are bad at long-term decision-making – yet we need it more today than ever before. Dealing with climate change is just one of many examples. Steven Johnson, the bestselling author of ten books on science, tech, and the history of innovation including Ghost Map, Where Good Ideas Come From, and How We Got To Now, is now applying his mind toward helping drive innovation into long-term decision-making.

The Bay Area tech community, like much of the rest of the country, is still grappling with what Trump’s election will mean for the future of the United States. The future of many digital efforts—including the United States Digital Service, created by President Obama in 2014 to encourage people with tech expertise to do a tour of duty improving government—is one looming question.

The results of the 2016 election will have many repercussions for the San Francisco Bay Area, the tech sector, the innovation economy, California, not to mention the nation and world. One week after the election, California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom analyzed what really happened, what opportunities have now opened up, and what the best strategies are going forward.

The digital revolution has thoroughly transformed everything to do with information, and we’re now in the early stages of the digital revolution transforming the world of material things. In our October What’s Now: San Francisco event, Nick Pinkston, co-founder of one of San Francisco’s most intriguing next-generation manufacturing firms, Plethora, explained what’s happening in this new industrial revolution and reflected on the coming repercussions.

Jane McGonigal, the world-renowned game designer and bestselling author, believes in the power of games to enact change. She’s spent the last decade proving how interactive digital games can transform both individuals and societies. At the fourth What’s Now gathering, Jane shared the latest in her ground-breaking body of work related to creating super-empowered hopeful individuals.

Every day, the average American uses the same amount of energy that he or she would get from eating 1,000 cheeseburgers. That’s the equivalent of all Americans consuming 320 billion burgers worth of energy every 24 hours.

Kevin Kelly is one of the most original thinkers in the San Francisco Bay Area, and he has spent much of his life seeking out other cutting edge innovators in the region. Join us in our second gathering of What’s Now: San Francisco, which will double as a book party for Kevin and those who have come to know him over the years.

John Battelle is the perfect person to kick off the series What’s Now: San Francisco. John can not only tell the big-picture story of the Bay Area tech boom, but he also has new insights into one of the region’s key drivers of innovation – startups. His most recent startup is launching NewCo Shift, a new media brand covering the rise of NewCos and the biggest shift in business and society since the Industrial Revolution.